Transcript

Environmental groups have pushed for decades to get the federal government solidly behind solar energy. Shawn Allee reports some of them don’t like the government’s most recent effort to promote it:

The Federal Bureau of Land Management developed 24 “solar energy study areas” in Western states.

The idea is to identify federal land that might be be good for solar power plants.

Some environmentalists scoured maps of these solar study areas and got concerned.

Jeffrey Morgan is with Tahquitz Sierra Club in California.

Morgan says a solar plant can take up hundreds of acres, and construction could disturb desert tortoise and cactus habitat.

“They have no concept the desert is a vital, living place with a vast diversity of species, unspoiled landscapes and many, many other things. They they just see it as a waste-land. That’s just not true – it’s not a waste-land.”

The Bureau of Land Management says the “solar energy study areas” are just that – they’re for study – and the government would not let solar energy developers disturb critical wildlife habitat.

Transcript

Six years ago, President Bush proposed to end our addiction to oil by building a hydrogen
economy. At the time, driving a hydrogen powered car didn’t seem that far off. But today, the
reality of mass produced hydrogen powered cars has hit some bumps in the road. Mark Brush
looks at the challenges ahead:

It’s all about the fuel cell. The cell converts hydrogen gas into electricity that can power up a
motor. And when that’s done – the only thing that comes out of the tail pipe is crystal, clean
water.

So there’s a lot of enthusiasm to build hydrogen powered cars. If you live in Southern California,
you can drive a hydrogen powered car right now.

(sound of a hydrogen car commercial)

But you can’t buy this car. You can only lease it. And you have to have a pretty good map.
There are only 2 places where you can fill the car up with hydrogen.

And that highlights just one of the challenges facing the hydrogen car right now. There’s no
infrastructure – no network of gas stations – to support it.

Steven Chu heads up the Obama Administration’s Department of Energy.

“It’s an infrastructure that is as extensive as the infrastructure for gasoline and diesel. And that
doesn’t come overnight.”

Chu wants to eliminate all the research money for hydrogen powered cars and trucks. He says
there are too many big problems to solve. There’s the infrastructure problem. Fuel cells are
expensive. The cheapest way to make hydrogen right now releases pollution. And there are
problems with storing the gas.

In an interview with MIT’s Technology Review, Energy Secretary Chu referred to these problems
as the four miracles. And that didn’t go over too well with some people.

“A miracle? Really? How many miracles have you seen? I’m not sure I’ve seen a real miracle in
my life.”

Levi Thompson directs the Hydrogen Energy Technology Laboratory at the University of
Michigan.

He says talking about these problems as miracles sends the wrong message. He admits, there
are some big puzzles to solve. But he’s convinced scientists can solve them.

“If you believe this is the savior, that this is going to transform the way we do things, I think you
have a responsibility to invest – even though that you see that it’s far behind.”

Thompson says the ultimate goal for a hydrogen economy is to get the hydrogen from water
using electricity from renewable resources like wind, solar, and hydro-power. So you get the
clean burning gas you’re looking for.

It can be done today, but it’s expensive. Thompson thinks it’ll get cheaper as alternative sources
of electricity become more widespread.

The Energy Department doesn’t want to give up on hydrogen research altogether. Secretary Chu
says fuel cells do make sense on a small scale – like to power fork lifts in a warehouse.

(sound of a warehouse and forklift)

Here at this Sysco warehouse in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a mini hydrogen experiment is
underway.

Sysco is a major food distributor. This warehouse is part of a year-long government funded
project. They’re running seventeen of their forklifts using hydrogen powered fuel cells made by a
company called Plug Power.

Darin VanDuyn is with Sysco. He says, mostly, they’ve had a good experience with these fuel
cells.

“We’ve had about 80 hours of lost time due to repair – minor failures, things like that – but nothing
major has disrupted their operation.”

VanDuyn says the company hasn’t decided yet whether they’ll move forward with the fuel cell
program. But policy makers say real-world experiments like these move us closer to mass
produced hydrogen vehicles.

Even though the Obama Administration wants to cut funding for hydrogen powered cars and
trucks, Congress holds the purse – and has the final say. So far, it looks like Congress will
continue to fully fund the research.

Automakers say the ups and downs of federal funding don’t affect their plans. Several
companies say they’ll start selling hydrogen powered cars in 6 to 8 years – and they’ll let the
market decide the fate of the hydrogen economy.

“If you think of nature as a company, it’s the largest in the world. So now we are in this economic crisis, if there was one company to save, it’s not the car industry, or saving a bank – it’s saving nature, because it’s for the benefit of all of us.”

Vié says they were only able to report on about 3% of all the known species around the world.

But, they still feel they have a pretty good idea of the overall trend. And it’s not a good trend.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

New York fashion designer Issac Mizrahi during a fitting session. Mizrahi used salmon leather to create an ensemble that includes a dress, jacket and shoes. (Photo by Mackenzie Stroh, courtesy of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum)

New York fashion designer Issac Mizrahi used salmon leather to create a dress, jacket and shoes. (Photo by Mackenzie Stroh, courtesy of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum)

You might not have heard of the design firm Pentagram, but more than likely you’ve seen
its work. Pentagram designed the shopping bags for Saks Fifth Avenue, the logo for
Citibank, the layout of the New York Times Magazine. In short, its designers make
things look pretty. Recently, Pentagram got a call from the nonprofit Nature
Conservancy. As Hammad Ahmed reports, it wasn’t the usual request for a nice new logo
or packaging:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/feature_ahmed_070609.mp3

Transcript

You might not have heard of the design firm Pentagram, but more than likely you’ve seen
its work. Pentagram designed the shopping bags for Saks Fifth Avenue, the logo for
Citibank, the layout of the New York Times Magazine. In short, its designers make
things look pretty. Recently, Pentagram got a call from the nonprofit Nature
Conservancy. As Hammad Ahmed reports, it wasn’t the usual request for a nice new logo
or packaging:

The Nature Conservancy wanted Pentagram to issue a challenge to big name designers.
And the challenge was this: design environmentally friendly stuff. In other words, you
have to use renewable, abundant, and natural materials… instead of plastic.

Pentagram stepped up the challenge, recruited some designers, and, now, I’m here to see
what they came up with.

Curator Abbott Miller and I are standing at the Smithsonian Design museum in
Manhattan.

“The exhibition actually goes, um, this way.”

The exhibition is called “Design for a Living World.” And honestly, it looks like a
Pottery Barn. Bowls, chairs, and rugs. When you look closely though, you see all this
stuff is made from really interesting materials. For example, salmon leather.

Miller: “Salmon leather is stripped away from salmon in the process of canning and
literally was considered waste, but is actually an incredible material.”

Ahmed: “So this is just like salmon scales?”

Miller: “It’s the skin of salmon that’s been preserved.”

Working with the preserved salmon skin fell upon big-name fashion designer Isaac
Mizrahi, who’s more used to designing with silk and satin.

“If you’re weighing like sort of you know ecology and glamour, I think they weigh the
same to me, sorry to say that.”

Ecology or glamour, huh? Well, Mizrahi took this salmon leather and he turned it into a
dazzling pair of high heels you’d expect to see on the red carpet.

“For some people, that kind of product, represents a negative.”

Gary Bamossy is a marketing professor at Georgetown’s Business School.

“These very expensive green items that are really just sort of ‘fashionista’ kinds of
acquisitions, they see that as frivolous and maybe even as a waste of money.”

So, not exactly a ‘green ethic.’

And this makes me wonder which way of being green is better. Buying more shoes made
from salmon leather? Or not buying more shoes at all?

Abbott Miller admits it’s a valid question.

“That whole question of should we buy less, I think the answer is probably yes. You
know everyone knows that we’re an over-consuming culture.”

So if the real problem is over-consumption, what’s the point of green design?

When I ask Gary Bambossy, the marketing professor, he comes back with another
question.

“Green design as it relates to museum and as fashion? Or green design as part of a
business model process?”

And that question makes me realize green design isn’t just a new look for the same
products. It’s a new way of making those products, and educating the consumer.

Abbott Miller says we really ought to know more about what we buy, what is used to
make it.

“We may come to a point of such hyperawareness of the materials that we use that that’s
part of the story of why you buy something.”

Miller and Bambossy agree that buyers increasingly want to know more. And that could
lead to products being more sustainable.

But, the thing is, all this awareness isn’t free. So, you’re left with one last question: are
you willing to pay more for knowing more about the things you buy?

Transcript

The giant climate change bill
squeaked through the House of
Representatives. Now the battle’s
beginning in the Senate. Rebecca
Williams has more on the debate:

Republican Senator Kit Bond said the climate change bill will be destructive to Americans.

“Impose new energy taxes on them, kill their jobs, punish the Midwest and South, help China and India and construct a new bureaucratic nightmare.”

The Obama Administration says doing nothing will cost us more.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu pointed out a recent MIT study predicting, with global warming, temperatures could rise as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

“During the last Ice Age, when Canada and United States, down to Ohio and Pennsylvania, were covered year round in a glacier the world was only 11 degrees colder. A world 11 degrees warmer will be a very different place.”

Democratic leaders are expected to bring a draft bill to the Senate before the August recess.

To cut water use, Molycorp's installed new waste water ponds and
recycling equipment. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Beneath this 60-acre spot are 100 feet of mine tailings, which
include salts and other mining by-products. The site's being remediated and
capped with vegetation, to ensure water doesn't move contaminants underground.
It's part of Molycorp's plan to recover from waste water leaks during the 1990s. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Transcript

Politicians like to show off pictures of wind turbines, hybrid cars, and other green hi-tech.
The idea is to get more of that in America, and maybe even make more of it here. Shawn
Allee found there’s a chance all of this could be complicated by the supply of key green-
tech ingredients:

I don’t know about you, but there’re a whole bunch of minerals I completely ignored in
high school chemistry.

Jack Lifton knows them by heart.

“… lanthenum, serium, neodymium…”

Lifton’s a market expert on these so-called ‘rare-earth’ minerals. And he says, even if you
haven’t heard of them, you might have them – even in your pocket.

“Without rare earths, we probably would not have portable computers and you
certainly wouldn’t have display screens today on anything – television or computer,
iPod, or iPhone, whatever.”

Rare earths make electronics light and they don’t need much power: just what wind
turbines and electric hybrid cars need.

There’s a problem in the rare-earth market, though. China’s the big supplier, but Lifton
says it might keep it’s rare-earth supplies for itself.

“In the next three or four years, you cannot make a device with a rare earth unless
it’s made in China and then the Chinese have made it very clear that their priorities
are to manufacture goods for their own consumer economy and keep the Chinese
employed.”

So, is the US gonna be left dry when it comes to green high tech? Well, there is a rare
earth mine in America, but it’s had some environmental problems.

The mine is trying to turn that around now.

Honan: “On the left is the overburden stock pile. Once you’ve seen one of those,
you’ve seen them all.”

Allee: “Big pile of rocks.”

Honan: “Big pile of rock.”

Mine manager Scott Honan’s driving me around the top of a mine in the middle of the
California desert.

He manages the mine for Molycorp. Honan’s showing me the mine’s waste water
ponds.

Honan: “Those two are fresh water.”

Allee: “Basically, you’re trying to recycle as much of this water as you can. Why is
that?”

Honan: “We have to confine all of our water activities on the site. We have to be
very efficient when we use water, we can’t afford to waste it.”

Gotta admit, this is not very sexy stuff, but Molycorp is crossing its fingers that
expensive water recycling and treatment investments pay off.

Molycorp uses water to process the rare-earth ore, and back in the 90s, the mining and
processing stopped for a while due to waste water leaks.

It’s desert, after all – and regulators didn’t want what little water there is contaminated by
a slurry of salts and mining byproducts.

Allee: “So where’re we heading, here?”

Honan: “The pit.”

Allee: “Is that what everyone calls it? ‘The Pit?’”

Honan: “Yeah. It’s about 55 acres if you look at the perimeter. From the top of the
high wall over there to the bottom, it’s about 500 feet.”

Honan says Molycorp will expand the mine in a few years – just in time for when China
might stop exporting rare-earths.

The company might be jumping a tad – regulators might clamp down on the operation if
Molycorp repeats some of its past water pollution mistakes.

Still…

“I think a lot of us at the mine have a big stake in the success of this operation going
forward. A lot of us feel it’s important for our country. What we produce here is
going to drive a lot of this energy efficient technology that people are anxious about.
It’s cool to be a part of that.”

And for Honan, what’s even cooler is that someone’s talking about building a wind farm
not too far from his mine.

Honan says it’d be awefully nice if his rare-earths are in those turbines.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sign documents on nuclear arms reduction
before their news conference at the Kremlin in Moscow Monday, July 6, 2009.
(Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Transcript

President Obama has reached what he’s calling a “joint understanding” with Russia on reducing the number of nuclear arms. But as Mark Brush reports this agreement doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be dismantling a lot more nuclear weapons:

As it stands now, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia will take warheads off of a delivery system, like a missile.

So, unless things go farther with this treaty, the warheads will still be kept in storage. And as it turns out, there are already thousands of these warheads kept in both countries.

Hans Kristensen is the Director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists.

He says even if the warheads get dismantled, there’s still the sticky issue of what to do with all that radioactive plutonium.

“The plutonium cores of those weapons, most of them, are still stored. We have something in the order of 15,000 warhead cores. An enormous amount of plutonium.”

The radioactive plutonium can be reprocessed and used in nuclear power plants.

Kristensen says the U.S. bought plutonium from old Soviet warheads – and that fuel is used nuclear power plants here in the U.S.

Transcript

Wine makers are shaking things up in their vineyards. Some of them use natural and organic methods to control pests and weeds instead of using pesticides. Now, one winery has discovered a unique, natural way to prune their grape vines. Joyce Kryszak visited the winery to get a first hand look:

At the Featherstone Winery in Southern Ontario there are 20 acres of perfectly manicured grape vines. They stretch out in neatly groomed rows across rolling green hills.

But no man or machine maintains this vineyard. There are 40 cute, little, wooly lambs on duty pruning the grape vines into tip-top shape.

David Johnson says he knows the idea of using lambs on his vineyard is a bit odd. Johnson thought so too when he first heard the idea. He found out about it visiting wineries in New Zealand.

“I didn’t believe them at the time. I thought they were having fun with a tourist and that this would be a big joke, some Canadian when he went back home, telling a story. So, yeah, I’ve taken a ribbing on the lamb thing, for sure.”

But Johnson ignored the jokes and decided to try it out.

His wife Louise Engel admits they were a little nervous at first setting the lambs lose in their valuable vineyard.

“We watched these lambs like hawks. I mean, all the staff were sitting out there and following them around – ‘did they eat any grapes, did they eat any grapes?’ But they didn’t. They’ve got very nimble little mouths and little teeths and little lips and they just eat around them.”

You see, pruning grape vines is delicate business. Only a targeted area of leaves is removed from the lower part of the vines to help the fruit grow better.

But Engel and Johnson say the lambs are perfectly designed to handle the job. The young, spring lambs aren’t tall enough and their necks can’t stretch up to reach the grapes. And, since they only weigh about 50 pounds, they don’t trample the soil. And, yes, their droppings do make excellent organic fertilizer.

(sound of lambs bleating)

Three years, and three flocks of sheep later, nobody’s laughing. Area vintners even have copied them; and for good reason. It would cost about $300 an acre to hire seasonal workers to come in for seven weeks in the summer to hand prune the vines. The lambs cost a fraction of that. And, when the pruning is done in August, off they go to the butcher.

Johnson says it turns out that free-range lambs fed a diet of grape leaves end up being pretty tasty.

“We sold them off last year to some caterers and some pretty nice restaurants, and they got back to us and said, ‘wow, these lambs are really special.’ They’re different; they’re almost veal-like in color and flavor and very, very lean. And they’re going to do lamb specials all month and pair it with our wines all month.”

But he admits there are some drawbacks.

They had a tough time finding enough lambs to do the job. There are about fifty million of them in New Zealand. But, it turns out, they’re kind of sparse in Ontario.

Johnson says there are some logistical problems, too. Even some organic pesticides are toxic to lambs. And, there’s all that fence building and moving around to limit the lambs’ access, so they don’t over-prune.

Still, they think it’s worth the hassle. Engel says the lambs fit in beautifully with their philosophy of sustainable farming and diversity in the vineyard.

“They’re lovely, tranquil, placid things, and there’s something almost biblical about having lambs roaming the place and wine here. And, it’s just, I don’t know, there’s just some itch that scratches that’s quite fulfilling.”

People visiting the vineyard enjoy watching the lambs too.

Customers enjoy lunch on the veranda as they look out on the pastoral scene. And, of course, they have a little wine. And one of the top selling wines is Black Sheep Reisling.

Transcript

Researchers are working on a new vaccine to prevent salmonella poisoning. But, Julie Grant reports, the researchers say it probably won’t help us when we’re faced with salmonella tainted tomatoes or alfalfa sprouts:

Salmonella poisoning affects about 20-million people worldwide each year and causes 200,000 deaths. A vaccine might sound like a good idea.

Arthur Thompson has been working on one at the Institute of Food Research in England. His group has found that salmonella relies on glucose for its survival. So they’re designing a vaccine to use that against the bacteria.

But Thompson thinks a salmonella vaccine should not be used to solve a problem that industrialized nations can already prevent.

“I don’t think it would be appropriate really, for something like this. I mean, I think in this case, it’s more a case of preventing the contamination in the first place, really.”

Thompson says the vaccine is better suited for people in developing nations where salmonella causes still causes typhoid fever.

Transcript

Fish is a big part of our diet. We eat everything from fish sticks and fast food fish sandwiches to sushi and swordfish steaks. But Lester Graham reports a new documentary makes the case we’re overfishing the oceans:

This new film is called The End of the Line.

“Everybody recognizes that there’s major problems with the world’s fisheries. And at one level it’s a question of ‘how bad is it?’”

That’s Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, one of the scientists in the documentary.

The film is a compelling argument that huge fishing trawlers are pushing the fish stocks to the edge.

The first sign of a problem was the cod fishery off the coast of Newfoundland. It collapsed in the 1970s.

But it seemed, despite problems around the world, the total catch around the globe was going up every year. That is, until researchers realized just a few years ago, Communist officials in China were reporting inflated fish numbers to impress their superiors. The world catch was actually getting smaller.

Scientists were stunned, and worried.

“For the first time in human history, the future of the food the world gets from the sea was in doubt.”

“Send a shiver down my spine because that was the one thing a lot of people were holding on to: well, things may be bad, but at least we’re catching lots and we’re catching more every year, so, it can’t be that bad.”

Boris Worm at Dalhousie University is one of the researchers who confirmed the world catch is getting smaller.

He and others have been studying the fact that boats are catching fewer fish, even though the nets are larger and the long lines put out more hooks.

Claire Lewis produced The End of the Line documentary. She admits, this leaves people who see fish as a good source of low-fat protein in a spot.

“It’s very hard. As a parent, you have conflicting evidence. You want to give your children and you want to feed yourself healthy food. You know that’s what fish is. On the other hand, you cannot possible ignore what we’re doing to the oceans, to the ecosystem in the ocean in eating too many fish.”

“Today in every ocean of the world, high-tech industrial vessels are hunting down every known edible species of fish.”

Ray Hilborn: “The basic problem in most fisheries that are in troube is too many boats.”

Charles Clover: “Too much capacity chasing too few fish.”

That last speaker is Charles Clover. The film documentary is based on a book he wrote by the same title. Like the film’s producers, he wants people to be more aware of the plight of the world’s fisheries.

Producer Claire Lewis says there are examples where fishing is being controlled more carefully.

“The most graphic example, I think, in our film, is that fact that in Alaska – which is a very well managed fishery – they take 10% of the stock only. In the North Sea in the E.U., they take 50% of the stock. Now, it seems to me that’s a really, really big difference.”

Lewis says, if left to the big commercial fishing operations, they’ll just keep fishing until fish stocks collapse. And she believes stricter government regulations and better informed consumers are the only things that will stop them.

“I really do believe that it’s the individual consumers who are going to make a difference to this. I think it’s something we can all individually do.”

The film tries to get people to start thinking about what they can do: such as, asking about the fish before you buy it, letting politicians know a sustainable fishery is important, and it encourages people to get involved with groups such as Seafoodwatch.org.

The End of the Line is narrated by actor and environmental activist Ted Danson. It’s appearing in theaters across the nation.